A project designed to experimentally define the pathophysiology and formulate a management approach to the complication of infection associated with prosthetic vascular grafting is in progress. The project is divided into three major sections; the first part is designed to evaluate the duration that a plastic vascular graft is susceptible to infection of bacteremic origin followng original implantation. The second stage is designed to develop fresh tissue alternatives to be used in infected or contaminated fields, and the third part of the project is designed to develop methods of preserving conduits in a viable state for ease of availability in the reconstruction of vascular continuity in the presence of infection or contamination. The first phase of the project has been completed with definition of prosthetic graft infectibility as a function of time. We have demonstrated that vascular prosthetic grafts constructed of the standard knitted Dacron material, remain susceptible to infection as long as one year following implantation in that there was a 30 percent incidence of infection when grafts were harvested following a single bacteremic challenge one year after original implantation. For the next fiscal year we propose to develop cryopreservation techniques of fresh tissue artery and vein as poential substitutes in infected or contaminated fields and to establish the duration that these conduits can be preserved by freezing and expected to maintain viability following implantation.